Since my last blog post, I've been thinking and reading more and more about different types of endangered species. It depresses me to think about the massive expansion of the human population across the planet and the complete disregard for any other species.
I stumbled across this article today and started to read more about the big cats; jaguars, leopards, tigers and lions. Perhaps my recent holiday to Tanzania has sparked a bit of an interest.
It should come as no surprise that every single one of the cats listed above are endangered to some extent. What did surprise me was the numbers of surviving animals.
I've seen the human population rise from six to seven billion people in my lifetime and I find it an absolute disgrace that so few of these animals now survive. It doesn't sit well with me.
I read an article a couple of years ago which described how people who had recently watched the film Avatar felt a kind of depression that the world they had seen on screen didn't actually exist. If you've seen the film, you know the scene I mean - the one where the lead character first becomes an Avatar and runs in to the forest whereupon he stumbles across an incredible array of flora and fauna. Sooner rather than later, we will all be watching documentaries on TV showing what an amazing array of beautiful animals once roamed the planet and we'll all feel that same sense of disappointment that they're no longer with us.
I stumbled across this article today and started to read more about the big cats; jaguars, leopards, tigers and lions. Perhaps my recent holiday to Tanzania has sparked a bit of an interest.It should come as no surprise that every single one of the cats listed above are endangered to some extent. What did surprise me was the numbers of surviving animals.
Take the jaguar, the third largest cat on the planet (after the tiger and lion) and previously indigenous to a good proportion of North America and all of Central and South America.
It is now estimated that there are between eight to fifteen thousand animals left in the wild.
I've seen the human population rise from six to seven billion people in my lifetime and I find it an absolute disgrace that so few of these animals now survive. It doesn't sit well with me.
I read an article a couple of years ago which described how people who had recently watched the film Avatar felt a kind of depression that the world they had seen on screen didn't actually exist. If you've seen the film, you know the scene I mean - the one where the lead character first becomes an Avatar and runs in to the forest whereupon he stumbles across an incredible array of flora and fauna. Sooner rather than later, we will all be watching documentaries on TV showing what an amazing array of beautiful animals once roamed the planet and we'll all feel that same sense of disappointment that they're no longer with us.
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